Marketing Through Podcasting and Storytelling with Your Brand Marketing's Ben Baker

0:00
Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, Founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. Stick around to the end of the show; we'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go.

And with us right now, we've got Ben Baker. Ben, you are the president and founder of Your Brand Marketing, you're found on the web at YourBrandMarketing.com. Thank you so much for joining us.

0:47
Hey, thanks for having me.

0:49
So Ben, from a very high level, please explain what YourBrandMarketing.com does.

0:54
Yeah, we are storytellers, storytellers of the brand, we do two different things. And both of them have to do with storytelling, the first thing that we do is we do leadership development. So what we do is we help stop being managers and start being leaders of organizations. And we do that through labeling people to understand what does it take to engage, retain and grow employees. The other part of our business is in the podcasting in podcasting realm, must be early in the morning here, what we do is we create white label podcasts for companies where we go out and we create, we host and we produce, and allow companies to be able to tell their messages in an effective way and shine while having somebody else take care of the back end and actually be the person up behind the mic for them.

1:42
All right, good. So So when So who would be kind of like your dream ideal client? And so when they come to you, they say, Ben, I've got a problem. And what do they usually say their problem is?

1:53
Yeah,

1:54
let's let's go with a podcast host for hire, because we probably don't have enough time to talk about both. The podcast host for hire is companies that are sitting there going, we've always marketed this way. We've always communicate this way. And we realize it's not working anymore. They're looking for different ways to engage their their customers in a more realistic, more authentic way. And they realize that podcasting works, but they haven't got a clue how to get started. So what we do is we help them create the whole creative process, we podcast, it we we produce the whole material for them, and allow them to be able to communicate with strategic partners, employees, vendors, customers, in a way that they are going to be able to be successful.

2:42
Just from having a podcast, I mean, what would we what what

2:44
what the podcast does for them is it gives them 30 pieces of content every single week, that they could turn around and be able to use through their social media platform. So it's about continuing the conversation. So it's not just the podcast itself. It's the material that comes out of it, right, that allows them to perpetuate, because not only can they use that in their social media platforms, but their employees could use it, their customers can use it, everybody has a better idea. And not only does that it also provides opportunities for internal training, as well as marketing on the external side.

3:21
Okay, wow. So yeah, so let's say that I connect with a guest. And rather than just having a one time 30 minute, wham, bam, thank you, man, you know, just kind of continuing on, you know, now, and I've had, you know, I've had I've been on shows, ah, who are really good at that. And they're repurposing but, you know, again, if you are like, for example, with a thoughtful entrepreneur, right, so, you know, we've got a daily show, we are a content. And you and I were talking like, it's like we have so much content is like even gonna be more than once per day. But, you know, we know that, you know, if we're producing this content, it would be a doggone shame. If all we did is that well, that one's in the can. And then, you know, it just goes out on the podcast directories. Like you're only I would say, like, one for us. The actual podcast is probably less than one 10th of the total audience reach easily. Yeah, I'm simply because you know, of our we have a decent social media audience. So I tell like when we with our guests, it's like, Look, we're going to do this in video, we're going to take video snippets, we're gonna share that on social media. We're gonna have to find little Mic drop moments, we're going to take the full video, we're going to put it on YouTube, we're going to promote that we're going to, you know, add some production to that. It's why not? Yeah. Well, if you're gonna do the work and the work being the production of the show, you may as well get maximum value. So again, think of this to any podcaster that's listening right now. If all You are doing is the podcast? I said one 10th. But it sounds like you may you may actually have some better numbers on there.

5:08
Yeah, it's it's it's insignificant. I mean, the audience that listens to it live or are the one and done audience Yeah, is you know, they're gonna listen to it in their car, they're gonna forget about it. However, if they're constantly being reminded, it's like marketing itself, you need to, you need to get in front of somebody seven times before they're going to start paying attention.

5:29
Right. So the more

5:29
you can take that content, and the more you can distribute it, and the more you can break it down into bite sized pieces that maybe some people will look at it on Instagram, some people will look at it LinkedIn, some people on Twitter, some people on Facebook, some people on tik tok for God knows where you're going to be able to grow your audience. And what it's going to do is it's going to push everybody back to your website, because that's where the central repository is. And if you can sit there and say, Oh, that was kind of cool. What else do they have? Boom, off, they come to your website and be able to look at not only the one podcast, but the compilation of podcasts, because it's the whole catalog that makes it valuable, it's sitting there going, we get this company, we get who they are based on the catalogue of information of the entire marketing scheme, not just one kick at the can. So that's what the whole thing is about is to be able to do that ongoing, consistent content marketing, that tells the story of the brand in different ways to different people. So it resonates across various different audiences.

6:32
Wow, wow. You know, I'm thinking about, you know, the different ways that we can, if you're producing all this content in a regular basis, and you said something that just kind of like, duh, you know, one thing that I you know, we do a lot we do, we do some repurposing, for sure. I think that there's for sure, there's much better opportunities for us to really dig in and say, wait a minute, I don't think we've even begun to scratch the surface on all the different ways that we can use this content. Before I get into my second point, I you could, could you share maybe some best practices on, you know, ways that you can use podcasts in, you know, if you record a podcast, what are some ways that you would recommend podcasters, or companies that are using podcasting, to better get that content and repurpose it in many ways?

7:25
Yeah, I mean, the one thing is, once you've cut it off, and we'll, we'll talk about cutting it up and how to cut it up. But is to make sure that as a company, you have it on your intranet, and you enable your people to share it. So you have 500 employees, thousand employees, 10 employees, each one of those people have 250 500 1000 5000 10,000 people that they're connected to on social media. If you enable your people to share the content on a regular basis, you're seeing audiences that your corporate social media platform will never see. And it allows them to be able to sit there and say, hey, look, this is what I do at work. And it gives them a sense of pride. It gives them a sense of purpose. And it also gives branded material that is on point and on message that you're not afraid for your people to be sharing out there. So there's it's empowering your people. But the trick is, and Gary Vaynerchuk did a really interesting thing that I you know, I love I love Gary, yo, sometimes he drives me crazy, but they on his birthday last year, he created 164 page deck, and you can find it on the internet. And what it does is it shows exactly how to take one piece of content and how to break it up into 100 different pieces of content. And that's what it is. And you know, I love Gary, because he's a 400 $500 million company, whatever he is, he's got hundreds of people. Yeah, he's got the, you know, he's got the bandwidth to sit there and say, okay, you 30 people are in charge of taking this one piece of content and breaking it up. The average company can't do that the average company doesn't have that. But if you could create 15 or 20 pieces, small little video snippets, audio grabs, yo take take the text do the best thing to do is to take the text from the podcast, turn it out and sit there and say wait a second, are there

9:15
tweets that can come out of this is there

9:18
small little snippets of information that are under 288 characters that you can you know you can put onto an image and send out on on Instagram or on Facebook or whatever, there's lots of different ways of doing it. It's utilizing the text and images and and the audio and the video in small little cut up pieces to be able to you know, tell the story in different ways because different some people like audio, some people like video some people like you know, reading material, you even have people that create short articles out

9:51
of concrete posts out of

9:53
it. So all of a sudden they become blog posts as well

9:55
because you have certain parts of your audience that that they still like blogging Post and you can take it and you can put it within your, your weekly or monthly newsletter. There's so many different ways that you can take this content and repurpose it in simple ways to be able to tell your story.

10:13
Yeah, so the the the thing that you had mentioned the, it's got, he's got it in a PDF with all the slides. It's titled How to create 64 pieces of content in a day. And you'll see it's You're right, it's got over 200 slides. I have the presentation. Wow. Yep. This is

10:34
what he went crazy. And yeah, I think there's even another one that that he did this year and 20 it's either in late 2019 or early 2020. Uh huh. That was 100 pieces of content. So yeah, so I think he went up that one. So yeah, there. But it's amazing what he was able to do. And it is it's a step by step process of how to do it. Now it takes time, it takes a little bit of expertise, you know, some people are going to do it better than others. But the trick is, is to sit there and just do it. And you may not do everything, you may just do certain things, you may just, you know, bring it down to a point that's manageable for you and your company. But those things are available, you could even job it out to somewhere like Fiverr, or you know, or Upwork or something like that. There's lots of services out there where you can just say, look,

11:23
take this and

11:24
make social media content out of this. Yeah. And be able to hire somebody that that's really what their jam is and what they love. Yeah.

11:32
And be able to put that out there. You don't have to do it internally.

11:36
Yeah, I love that. I did. Ben, I am so committed to this. Thank you. I'm so glad we've had this conversation. It's been on our list, right? And like I said, I'd say I'd give us a solid C.

11:51
C, you know,

11:51
your middle of a pack? Yeah.

11:54
There's maybe I'll give us a b minus.

11:59
There you go. You're above average. I like Yes,

12:00
I'd much rather be a minus. So Exactly, yes. So the next thing I wanted to share that I was just, you know, as you were talking kind of thinking of is not only just repurposing each episode as they come out, but then curation. So if you start doing a lot of these, you know, I already mentioned john, I'm in slack while and if you heard me typing in the background, like I love doing that, like when I'm talking with guests.

12:29
Oh, totally, you know, well, while the guest talks, you sit there

12:32
and go, Okay, what can I find? That's right, and I got great ideas. So I messaged in our blog, channel and slack. So we need to start coming up with clever ways to curate our podcast content, like top 10 episodes about sales, leadership, etc. So it's the curation that Yeah, once you start building this library, like we're getting on? Well, as of when this publishes, we'll get on 500 episodes. Oh, yeah, recorded that had is gold. Now you walk into the Library of Congress. And if you have a great way where that's indexed, other than it's just indexed by number, and you don't have a way of searching that are like five, it's like, what a mess. So you're going to look at that gigantic pile of content you'd like? How do I decide what to listen to? And to your point, you had mentioned this, you may have been, you may have produced something a year ago, why would you just put that out in the graveyard, and without getting more and more valid, because right now, there are people that are searching for the content that we covered in that episode a year ago. But if we're not bringing that front and center from time to time, or highlighting our best content, again, I think that that, that we missed the boat.

13:48
Well, not only that, but also making sure that you have the meta tags in there. Because if you have the meta tags in there, I interviewed Seth Godin, three and a half years ago. Now, if you didn't know that I had, you'd never find unless you scroll down 180 episodes, you'd never find it. But it's a matter of it unless I bring it up to the top. And you're right. It's top 10 lists, it's your most influential people creating a whole bunch of meta tags that allow people to do it. And they say, you know, so what I have is, is like, we have different tags that we use a different posts for so make sure that they are searchable. And that's the key thing is is making sure that it's searchable. That's why we put our entire transcript in every post. We don't do it, because everybody's gonna read it. We do it because Google crawls it. Sure. And when Google's crawling, you know, that text, all of a sudden your website goes up and up and up and up and up. Yeah, and more and more people see it and therefore you know, what, so does so does the viewership of your of your website and your and your blog and everything.

14:52
Yeah. Beyond that, you know, so we've been doing transcripts for quite a while. It's not really transcripts aren't very user friendly. And so he added Ours Yeah, who? Right, right, so, so right now, like our big undertaking, and sadly, we just didn't allocate the resources early on toward this. But, you know, what is the most valuable way I can deliver a written version of this conversation? So making sure you've got bullet points and lists and headers, and, you know, you know, imagery and that sort of thing to make it really easy for the consumer to look at that and go, Okay, I'll start reading this. Okay. I'll read it for five seconds more. Okay. So we're always earning attention, you know, five seconds at a time, bay. And, you know, again, today's reader, you see if they go to your web page, and it's just a sea of gray, good luck. Oh, absolutely. You can test this exactly

15:52
what we create, when we trade the transcripts of the page, we interview, increment them with images, we integrate them with tweetable quotes, we put everything in there to make sure that it's engaging and interactive, because you want people to keep scrolling. The more you can keep them scrolling, the more interesting it is. And the other thing is, and here's a repurpose, we did a mini podcast during COVID, that ended up being 12 episodes, on creating the new normal, it was all about leadership in a post pandemic world. Yeah, we took that we transcribed it and created a book out of it. So Mike, my co producer and I on that podcast, we wrote a book and all of a sudden, we'd have I have yet another book up on on Amazon. That is based on that book. And I'm putting a compilation book together right now on the top 25 episodes. And though that's also going to be a book that I'll be putting up on Amazon, probably sometime in the next six months to a year. Yeah. So there's so many different ways to take that information and repurpose it. So it's valuable. Yeah, it's just a matter of how creative Can you be, or how creative is somebody who you hire could be because you as you as a host, may be really good at what we do, and be able to talk to people be able to have this engaging conversation. But we may not be good at all of the little things that need to happen. So the trick is to find the people that that's their passion, that's what they're good at. That's the thing that they love to do. And let them do what they do best.

17:25
Right? Right. This is great. Okay, so then your website, again, is your brand marketing.com. What does engagement look like? What does it What would it I don't know if you want to share this, but what does it cost to work with you? I mean, just are generally like, who would be a good fit for you?

17:47
Yeah, I won't get into into price tags, because it's how long I

17:51
can change to so Hmm, that can charge of course, you'll get the thoughtful entreprenuer bumps. So I would encourage you to double your prices.

17:58
Yeah, exactly. You know, it's just, it's like being on Shark Tank, you know, all of a sudden, your phone's gonna start ringing Exactly. No, you know, our attitude is is how long is the ball string, every engagement is different every engagement is that it's a matter of sitting there. The first thing we do is we find out about our customer, what Who are you? What are your goals? What do you value? What are your objectives, and what's your vision for your company going forward. And that's what where we start the conversation. It's all about you. It's about your brand, it's about your message. It's about your vision of success. And the podcasting company. We work mostly with b2b companies, we work with companies that are seven years and above, and usually companies that started about $25 million. Usually, we're working with companies that are going through some type of flux, you know, COVID is a is a perfect example. Everybody's going through Fox, but it's people that are either going through mergers, acquisitions, they've gone through brand changes, they're having, you know, large amounts of growth, they're having shrinkage, they're losing a bunch of employees. There's lots of things that are doing it, but it's usually companies are going through some type of flux in their life. And they're, and they don't know why. And they're looking for somebody who can help them walk their way through it. So we start from a very consultative approach. Yeah, you know, and then we go from there, there is there is no box, you know, there is no yo 2995 package, by the by, by this and you get ABCD and E. Yeah. You know, but it's what we do is we we try to create something that's gonna make you shine and help you succeed on your terms.

19:35
Yeah. All right. I love it again, Ben Baker, you're the president and founder of Your Brand Marketing found on the web at YourBrandMarketing.com. Ben, great conversation, I love episodes where I set lots of action items, if I'm just speaking, and hopefully our listeners are doing likewise. But and then again, I appreciate you sharing a bit about your company, your brand marketing calm then thank you So much for this conversation.

20:01
Josh love being on the show with you. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit UpMyInfluence.com slash guest. Now if you got something out of this interview would you share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you do that, tag us with the hashtag UpMyInfluence. Each month, we scour Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. We pick one winner from each platform, and you get crowned king or queen of that social media. What do you win? We're going to promote you and your business to over 120,000 social media fans totally free. Now, can you also hook us up now in your podcast player right now? Please give us a thumbs up or a rating and review. We promise to read it all and take action. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. Your feedback helps us fulfill that mission. And while you're at it, hit that subscribe button. You know why? Tomorrow, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed 15 minutes a day. My name is Josh Elledge. Let's connect on the socials. You'll find all the stuff we're doing UpMyInfluence.com. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur movement.